


Giving Caviar to an Elephant

by Peapods



Category: Smallville, Twin Peaks
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-18
Updated: 2011-05-18
Packaged: 2017-10-19 13:05:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peapods/pseuds/Peapods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Audrey Horne and Lex Luthor have more in common than the fact that they are sometimes awful people. And given to pointless conjecture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Giving Caviar to an Elephant

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** All television shows and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual. 

Audrey Horne's father practically wrote the book on being a magnificent bastard and she learned the business at his knee. She's eight years older than him, but doesn't look it. She has looked like an adult since she was eighteen, something she has used to her advantage. People tend to underestimate her. She practically steams of "femme fatale" and doesn't take any of his crap.

"You like boy scouts, Lex, that's the problem," she says, as she zips her dress. "I saw you with him, recognized that look immediately."

"Sounds like you know the feeling," he notes calmly from the bed. They're in Metropolis and this city is the only place they see each other. Lex is cautious with Clark in this town. He doesn't want the two worlds to mix.

She huffs out a laugh. She's not fake, he'll give her that. She is effortlessly elegant even when she smiles too large or laughs too loudly. He's drawn to her.

"People like you and I, Lex? We crave men and boys like that," she reapplies her fire engine red lipstick and sends Lex a knowing look. "See you back at the party?"

And she sashays out of the room.

*****

"Audrey," he says and there is a vague sense that he should be panicking, "I didn't expect to see you here."

She's camped out in his office chair, swiveling in an almost careless manner, one leg thrown over the other.

"Come on, Lex," she says, one expertly plucked eyebrow raised. "I'm a businesswoman. I have interests beyond the bedroom."

"This is about the Patterson deal," he states, not letting his eyes roll at his own hubris. Of course, he wouldn't be the only one interested in a lucrative defense contract.

"It's just business, Lex. I thought that was what you liked about our... relationship?"

Lex tilts his head in agreement. "My confusion stemmed from the fact you and your company have never shown an interest in such... deals before."

She shrugs casually. She doesn't wear business suits, not traditional ones. Today, she looks like a Katherine Hepburn clone with the wide-legged slacks, the coiffed hair, the superior look. Audrey has never been a slave to fashion. She wears what she wants to wear, what looks good, what will make her stand out.

"My husband left me this company, trusting that I would do what I could to expand it, to make sure that no opportunity passed it by," she says, and Lex imagines there is real sadness when she mentions the man.

"Lex?" comes an uncertain voice and he turns, half-surprised, to see Clark. The boy is hovering, eyes flicking between Lex and Audrey. "Am I--?

"No, you're not," Audrey interrupts. She smiles, big, genuine. "Audrey Horne Wheeler," she uses her whole name and extends what he knows is a butter soft, manicured hand.

"Clark Kent," he says politely, but Lex knows he's wary. No matter how genuine her smile may be, it's a shark's smile. Full of teeth and eager for blood.

"Audrey is an old friend of mine," Lex says, diplomatically.

"Oh," he seems relieved, his smile more welcoming.

"Well, I hate to leave, but I have a meeting this evening that simply won't wait any longer," she says. She gives Lex a kiss on the cheek, smiles at Clark again and leaves.

"She seemed... nice," Clark says.

"She's ruthless," Lex tells him with a smile. "What can I do for you, Clark?"

"Entertain me for a few hours?" Clark suggests with a half-smile.

Lex can't help his answering smile. "I think I could manage that. What'd you have in mind?"

"Pete let me borrow Goldeneye."

"You're on." Lex can't resist a first-person shooter, especially one of the classics.

*****

"Were you in love with Jack?" Lex asks one night as they nurse too-full drinks. She's on the sofa, curled on one side, head propped on a fist. Her eyes are droopy.

"Yeah, I was," she says. "You're wondering about Clark."

"No."

"Yes," she insists. "I wasn't in love with my boy scout. He was amazing. The perfect man. But he wasn't for me. You're in a different situation."

"How's that?"

"You _are_ in love."

"Some kind of psychic now? Empath?"

"A man once taught me a lesson in simple body language, face reading. Everything you do is oriented to him. You think of him constantly. What he will think, what he would do, how he would look at you. I admit, for awhile, I thought of my boy scout the same way, but he showed me that not every decent person in the world has to be the focus of your love and attention. He just taught me it was out there."

"Which led you to Jack."

"Jack," she affirms.

*****

They were both born in a time period when writing letters to your future offspring wasn't done. It's a sentimental, over done, useless tradition and neither Benjamin Horne nor Lionel Luthor approved of that kind of sentimentality. They themselves find this new tradition trite and conventional, the hallmark of too much bad TV. It's something their generation does, possibly the generation after them, but they won't.

Neither of them say that they sort of wished their fathers _had_ taken the time to express exactly what they had expected out of their disappointing offspring. For Audrey, death came too early for her to ask. For Lex, well, it's just as 'too late' for him as it is for her.

"Ms. Horne--it is still Horne?--so good to see you again," Lionel says, laying a kiss on her silk gloves, a concession to those who don't like to see ugly burn scars. She had reconstructive surgery everywhere else and looks as flawless as she once was, but she kept a few. Reminders, a few white lines that stand out even on her alabaster skin.

When Lionel's eyes are averted she sends Lex an amused look. He and Clark are cruising the buffet table and Clark is popping tiny samosas and cheese and olives into his mouth like he's stocking up for winter.

"Mr. Luthor, it's been awhile," she says.

"I hear that you are still close to my son."

"We do get together occasionally, drinks, dinner," she says. She's become an expert at the handling of information. Never too much, never too little. Enough to get the point across. She never sits down to a conversation to ask a man whether his palms ever itch. Not anymore.

"No business together?" And she knows he's fishing for a contract, fishing for a weakness to exploit. She knows men, and women, like Lionel Luthor. Some of them are dead, others are at the top of their game.

Laura should have been one of the latter. Instead, she is the former.

"Not as of yet, Mr. Luthor," her smile is coy and she calculates the brightness. She knows her smile is the envy of most women in her social circle. A smile that belongs on the face of a whore. A high-priced one, but a whore nonetheless. Strange, then, that Laura had looked like the girl-next-door.

"Well, do let me know if you're interested," he says, taking her hand again, but not bending to kiss it.

"I'll keep it in mind."

*****

February and March are strange months for her. She's not entirely sure how she's supposed to feel around this time, but she's pretty sure "weird" isn't it. Laura died on the 23rd. Audrey met Special Agent Dale Cooper on the 25th. Then the world went, what was that phrase Bobby had used? Oh yes, "ape-shit." She should have been staring into a fireplace, the heavy, discordant jazz she used to prefer in the background, nursing some amber drink that was far too smooth.

Instead, she is at a small town coffee shop debating between regular coffee, no cream, no sugar--as she generally takes--or something so confounded with confection, topped with whipped cream and chocolate sauce and cinnamon as to hardly be called "coffee" anymore. Lex makes the decision for her and five minutes later she's debating whether she'll need a straw to get past all the crap on top.

"I don't generally indulge," he reassures her, "but they, uh, haven't quite mastered the art of a perfect cup of coffee."

It makes her smile, makes her think of her boy scout, her knight in shining armor who would have rather given up his badge than let something like sprinkles touch his beloved coffee.

"I don't either, but maybe I should more often," she says, giving up and sipping through the ubiquitous tiny red straws that only populate coffee shops and bars.

"Well, I didn't invite you all the way out here to discuss the finer mechanics of coffee-making," Lex says. They eschew the big chairs for a table near the window. If she didn't know better she would guess that Lex wants to be seen with a beautiful woman. Lex is more abstruse. "You acquired, about five years ago, a lab interested in, well, the paranormal to put it plainly."

"Yes, though most people don't know that and even fewer are interested in why," she says, on her guard. Rosenfield Labs was a small research group, one specifically created in response to the events of 1989. What could Lex possibly want with it?

"Well, I am. There is something about this town. Something I am certain is linked to the meteor shower that devastated it in 1989." Apparently, 1989 was a lynch-pin year.

Audrey has a disturbing gaze, or so she's been told. She can look right through a man. Lex is sincere and more interestingly, Lex is passionate. She knows the meteors took his hair and gave him his immune system, but there's something else driving him. She wants to know what.

"So, what is your proposition?"

"A contract, very discrete. I want your lab to investigate the meteor rocks, their effects."

"A sentence that suggests they have already had some effect, beyond, well, yourself."

"Yes, sometimes with harmful outcomes."

She has stirred her coffee enough that the cream on top has melted and she can finally take a proper sip. She winces at the sweetness, runs her tongue across her top lip and tilts her head.

"Why not your own lab? You have gotten your hands on one now, right?"

"They're--they are not trustworthy," he says and there is a wealth of back story there she will never hear.

"Draw up the paperwork," she decides. "And just for your information, everything done by my lab is above board."

"Which is why I chose it. My boy scout," he uses the term reluctantly, but warmly, "has taught me a lot about how I want to run my life and my business."

She smiles. "They tend to have that effect."

*****

Sometime in the past year they went from casually sleeping with each other and stealing each others business to being friends. The kind of friends who are allowed to throw home truths in the others face and not in an attempt to throw the other off his game. The lack of pronoun ambiguity meaning Audrey takes great pleasure in being the thrower.

"You're not interested in what happened to these other people," she says, flipping casually through a file folder of names. "It's the farm boy. Clark."

"And if it is?" His voice is a warning even if his face is carefully polite, carefully amused. They are more careful than their fathers in many respects.

"No problem," she says. She knows all about personal missions, a personal stake. Falling in love with another man hadn't changed that. "Why, though? You seem to have made up your mind already."

"I need to know. I don't know why, but I need to."

"Oh, Lex," she says shaking her head. "Letting all your existential angst get caught up in a sixteen year old boy isn't exactly the smartest of moves."

"But there it is," he admits.

*****

There are days Lex makes Clark forget that anyone else exists. He's not sure how he manages it. He has experimented, repeated, changed certain variables, but so far there is no one constant, no one dependent variable. Except for Lex himself.

"You play dirty," Clark announces as the little man fishes him from the water again.

"It's practically the _rules_ that you play this game dirty," Lex points out as three more shells materialize around his car. Bowser is hard to maneuver, but he's good for running Clark's little Toad off the road. Lex always chooses his racer after Clark. The teen seems not to have picked up on his machinations.

Clark is way back in eighth. Again. And Lex is sailing into his final lap with Mario and Peach so far behind they may as well still be on the first lap.

Lex likes winning, but then that's not exactly the last thing people notice about him.

They've been playing for hours and they haven't gotten bored. They paused for sandwiches--turkey and cheese with goldfish crackers crunched in the middle for Clark, chicken and pesto with provolone for Lex--and sodas and then had camped out on large, squishy pillows and taken up their controllers for another marathon round.

"Boys and their toys," Audrey's voice is amused as she comes in. She's dressed as casually as he's ever seen her, which means lip balm instead of lipstick and flats instead of heels.

"You know us boys, we long for competition since we aren't allowed to go hunting with clubs anymore," Lex says without breaking concentration. He can't say the same for Clark who has slipped off yet another bridge. Sure, she's no Lana Lang, but Audrey doesn't exactly crack mirrors, he thinks sarcastically.

Lex wins the game with a well aimed green shell and while the long trophy cut-scene goes on he rises as gracefully as he can from the ground. Clark only turns to rest an elbow on the couch.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, Audrey?"

"I've got some information on the meteors," she says like she _knows_ Lex doesn't want Clark hearing any of this.

"The meteors?" Clark asks immediately.

"Yes, Clark," Lex answers. "Audrey has a lab that's dedicated to more... paranormal studies. I asked her to look into the situation. It's really something the government should be dealing with, but they've proved themselves alarmingly incapable."

"Oh," he says. "Should I... go?"

"No, Clark, I'll only be a second," Audrey says. "Lex, this stuff is dangerous. My scientists can't identify the exact nature of the radiation, but they're fairly certain these particular meteors weren't just some random debris. They did some animal testing," she shook her head. "What those animals became--"

"They became exactly like certain residents of Smallville," Lex concludes.

"An... aspect of it seems to be a tendency to," she hesitates as though she can't describe it. "Paranoia? Anger? Frankly, Lex, I'm astonished you turned out so normal."

But Lex's heart was beating hard and fast because it wasn't like those traits were strangers to him.

"Lex. _Lex_ ," he shakes his head and focuses on Clark's voice. "You're okay, okay? You're not like them."

"How do you know? I was as affected as anyone else. Clark, the scarecrow that year--"

"Lex!" he exclaims, shaking Lex's shoulders. "Maybe that's all true, but you haven't hurt anyone, you haven't--you're not like them."

He hurt Nixon, he would hurt so many people. Kill them, torture them, put them in a little cage to study.

But he won't. Clark will make sure he won't.

*****

There are days when Lex can't stand the sight of Clark. These days are generally preceded by some mutant maniac trying to murder everyone and Clark lying about his abilities again. Lex doesn't understand. They deal with these mutants so often, Lex is one himself, how could Clark think that Lex would think less of him? Would treat him any differently?

Clark carries guilt and lies like the hay bales he routinely lugs around. It's easy to smell their stink, to watch them flit across his face. He is abominably careless with his face, with the tone of his voice. He has not learned artifice. Lex has guessed at his strength, guessed that, from an early age, Clark was told to be gentle, to be careful and Clark is very good at that.

Whatever he holds back now must be bigger, must be more recent, more devastating, not something he has been given years of instruction to cover. Lex wants to be understanding, wants to let Clark tell him in his own time, but his damned obsessive nature won't let him.

"Brooding, Lex?" Audrey asks as she enters unannounced, already heading to the side cart. She mixes a drink expertly then comes to perch in the chair next to his. Together they stare into a rich fire.

"I don't think," he starts. Swallows and tries again, "I don't think Clark is a meteor mutant."

"I think whatever happened here and what happened in my hometown are connected."

He sends her a sharp look. "Quite a leap. The meteor shower happened in October, wasn't it--"

"February," Audrey says. "But there was another a year before."

"Unconnected," Lex concludes, resolutely.

"I'm not as certain."

Their back and forth isn't rapid fire, isn't full of innuendo or accusation, it is slow, drunken.

"You be certain all you want to," Lex says. He knows the truth. In this one thing, he knows.

At least he thinks he does.

*****

"It's not that simple!" Clark is yelling, but Lex can't listen. On one hand he's got Clark, lying and puppy-dog eyeing his way through each successive encounter. On the other he's got Audrey throwing numbers and research and stories, convinced that the meteor rocks are part of a greater story than the catastrophe in 1989. Owls and mutants, caves and more caves. But it doesn't stop there. On one foot is his father, demanding results, demanding answers, demanding his say. And the other foot is devoted to everything else. The Kents, the plant, LexCorp, a grocery list of issues that he has to deal with before these other things can be managed. It means that he is a ringmaster, a juggler, a one man band all at once.

"Clark," he says with a sharp intake, trying to calm himself. He's upset, he knows it. No one but Lionel Luthor has been able to make him feel this way in years. "I am trying very hard to be a good person, to be your friend, to never ask the questions you are just begging I won't ask. But it's getting to be too much of a burden."

He says it like he'll stop wondering, it'll stop bothering him so long as Clark either takes himself out of his life or tells him the truth.

"Lex," his voice in plaintive and Lex can't help but turn and look at him. He looks... cornered, uncertain, so frightened that, had it been anyone else, Lex would have wanted to hunt down who had put that look there. And he remembers that, for all his grown up appearance, Clark is still very young.

"Clark," Lex says and he's equally confused, desolated, unsure where to go. He may be in his twenties but that has very little to do with what he is able to handle and what he is not. He can't go forward still feeling like this and to go back would mean going back to a time where he didn't know Clark. And that wasn't acceptable.

Clark seems to be drawing some kind of strength from somewhere. He straightens, takes deep breaths, blinks his eyes rapidly and Lex is startled to realize that he was blinking back tears. Clark is a gentle person, down to his very core and Lex is not. He hurts, he agonizes, but he has never felt like this boy standing in front of him looking ready to vomit from the sheer notion that his best friend is angry and upset and unable to see past, to accept the lies.

Lex is a hypocrite. Yes, he has shutdown many of the projects his father ran and has even thrown away his own plans in the face of Clark's and Audrey's disapproval, but he still embezzles from his father, still investigates every mutant and Clark, still wouldn't hesitate to kill to protect.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm so sorry." They are in the barn and Mr. and Mrs. Kent are just a pitch away and Lex doesn't want to fight, not really. "I'm just so tired." It's an excuse and the truth and he sags against the wall, closing his eyes.

"Lex," Clark says, his voice a little choked. "It's--it is _so_ hard to lie to you. To _you_. I can lie to Chloe and Pete and Lana easy, but you've never been easy."

He acknowledges that there are lies and Lex knows that that is a major step forward them. They don't know everything about each other and that's to be understood. You can know a person for twenty years and never know what the hell is happening in the others head. Just look at him and his father.

"I'm--I'm not an easy person, I know," Lex starts, and it is not a careful speech that wants to come tumbling out. He's only twenty-three. He's still so young. He can act like a businessman and he can act more mature than a sixteen/seventeen year old, but there are age-old insecurities and shortfalls of self-confidence that every person his age feels. "I push and I'm, well, manipulative. I know as your friend I'm supposed to just let it go and forgive you and admit that I was wrong to be even thinking about pressuring you, but I can't do that. Though, the you-admitting-to-lying thing is a pretty good push in the right direction."

"I," Clark clears his throat and approaches Lex. He opens his eyes to meet Clark's, shadowy in the night and twinkling with the Christmas lights that line the barn. He looks calmer, as if he's come to some kind of conclusion. Lex wishes he'd tell him then, because he's still groping for a rope. "I sometimes wonder whether we are friends."

Lex is winded.

"Like, because my friends... I don't feel this way about them. I don't even feel this way about Lana. Lex, you can make my heart twist just by smiling at me," he smiles, a twist of his lips that he looks like he's trying to control. "And I think that, whatever it is, is why this is so much more difficult for us."

His mouth is open on a protest or a question or in simple amazement. Because he is a stupid, stupid man. And blinder than his father once was, apparently. And when the hell did _Clark_ get so brave? Granted, Clark is one the bravest people he knows, but not about this, not with stuff like this.

"You feel the same, right?" Clark asks, but he looks so sure, like even if Lex could lie he'd just smile and nod and not believe a word.

"Clark," his voice is dry and cracked and he knows that this isn't supposed to happen to him. Clark is smiling and moving toward him and then his lips are possessed. No longer his own and being caressed and loved. He's never been kissed like this.

*****

Audrey likes to drink beer right from the bottle. She once admitted to him that it was a lot harder to drop and spill a beer that was in a bottle. They sip at their expensive micro-brews and wait for the fireworks to start. Audrey has conceded the weather and wears a cotton t-shirt and tiny khaki shorts. Clark sits on Lex's other side with his own drink--alcohol, they have discovered, has very little effect on him, only a slight buzzing that isn't _instantly_ metabolized, but requires the drinking habits of a newly-minted college freshman to maintain. He is comfortable in his white t-shirt and jeans and Lex envies both him and Audrey. They are both exquisite in the heat. Black-brown curls only become more pronounced, not frizzing like his own hair might have done had he still possessed it.

"There was no link," Audrey says, toneless. "Nothing to explain what--" she stops herself, takes a long pull of her beer.

Lex wants to give her the answers she seeks. If he even knew where to start he might even try. But she has done more than he could ever offer and still has no answers. He has the answers he needs and she has discerned all on her own that illumination does not lay in the direction of Smallville or Clark Kent.

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy," Clark says softly like he truly believes it, but that he knows that explanation will mean very little to Audrey.

But he can see that she is affected. She had introduced him to her 'boy scout' as she called him. He had been an astonishing man. Full of hokey wisdom and bright smiles that hid the poison that kept him that way, that made him Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Dale Cooper instead of the evil that had taken up residence. Even Lex could tell, in the short hours he was allowed to talk to him, that this man and Clark would get along extremely well. That they were men who truly believed there were mysteries beyond their reckoning.

They had become the mysteries themselves, they knew some answers were better left unsought.

"Well," she says, sighing and pounding the rest of her beer. "I suppose I've got a few more years."

"What do you mean?" Lex asks, brow furrowed.

"Well, it won't be 25 years later until 2014."

Both he and Clark's heads turn like curious birds, staring at her quizzically. She doesn't answer, only pops the top off another beer and settling back into her chair. A moment later they both sat back and took pulls off their own brews.

Bright red and blue bathed their pale faces as lights burst in the night sky. Below them, the populace gasps and points and claps. Audrey reaches over and flicks a switch on the radio and a jazzy beat, completely inappropriate for the "fuck yeah USA" themed fireworks and yet somehow perfect, begins. Audrey's head bobs back and forth. Clark begins to snap. Lex looks at both of them like they're crazy, but discretely allows his foot to start tapping.

Every day, once a day, he thinks, give yourself present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it. Just let it happen.

Yeah, that sounded all right.


End file.
